Read the full article by Lauren Kirchner (Consumer Reports)
“It was November 2016 when one of the earliest warning signs flashed, in the form of an unassuming and very unlucky dairy farm in Arundel, Maine.
That’s when Fred Stone learned that water on his farm contained high levels of PFAS. The source of the pollution was later found to be recycled sewage sludge, which he had been told for many years was a safe fertilizer. But per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—otherwise known as ‘forever chemicals’ for their persistence in the environment and in humans—have been linked to cancer, immunity and endocrine problems, and infertility.
The chemicals had contaminated not just his body but his cows and their milk. The land that three generations of his family had worked on for over a century was now toxic.
Stone took his story public, and similar reports from other farmers around the country followed. In 2018 a dairy and cattle farmer in New Mexico learned that PFAS-containing firefighting foam from a nearby Air Force base had leached into his well water, putting him out of business. In 2022 Michigan shut down a cattle farm because fertilizer it got from a nearby wastewater treatment plant had contaminated the cows’ feed with PFAS. And earlier this year, the owners of two ranches in Texas said that PFAS-laden fertilizer had killed their livestock and made them sick, too.” …